


a touch that closes wounds

by louscr



Series: i said i wanted to worship something [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood, Forgiveness, Hunt!Jon, Recovery, Reunions, Slaughter!Martin, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louscr/pseuds/louscr
Summary: (It feels like both a temptation and a warning, the ravenous, desperate part of him whispering that this man is a monster, a killer, something other like the things that smell of crackling bone or groaning dirt above and below.)"Martin," Jon whispers when he's close enough to see each individual speck of red against the pale blue of his shirt, "it's been a while, huh?"
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: i said i wanted to worship something [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539373
Comments: 9
Kudos: 159





	a touch that closes wounds

**Author's Note:**

> sorry it took like, three months to write this it has been a Very Busy winter lol

Georgie hugs him as soon as the graduation ceremony is over, familiar and overwhelming, and he can feel joy bubbling under every inch of his skin, wrapping around him warm and safe. In the moment, all he can think of is how much he loves her, how thankful he is to have met her, so he presses a kiss to her forehead and nearly takes out his own eye on her cap instead of saying so.

She laughs, bright and loud, and Jon can't help but follow suit. For the friendship he's found here and for the plan he's wrapped around his mind in so many hopeful layers.

_ (His plan for how things need to go, for what he has to do now that he's learned how to walk the razor line between monstrosity and humanity without slicing his soul open and bleeding out.) _

_ (For how to reconcile, how to heal.) _

"After you go home and talk to him you're moving closer to me, right?" Georgie yells to be heard over the crowd's conversation after she's finished laughing, "Because you're not going to ditch me that easily Jonathan Sims."

Her hair is wild beneath her cap and it reminds Jon of so many late nights and fingers gentle through his own hair after he'd braided hers, of too many documentaries and melty bowls of ice cream.

"Of course," he calls back, "where else would we go?"

_ (The 'we' is a hopeful one, and Georgie squeezes his hand and smiles when he says it.) _

* * *

Returning home feels, in its first moments, like relief, like breathing again.

Then the veneer of time spent away slips off and hunger floods through Jon's veins and crackles through his gut like lightning, stoked by the memories and echoes of scent in every corner. It feels like bricks laid across his back and sandbags laced around his ankles.

_ (Jon has been walking with much heavier burdens for so long now though, all leaden ropes of guilt and fear.) _

He runs a thumb across the stone Georgie had given him for good luck, and begins to wander the streets, because he isn't sure where else to go. He isn't sure where to find Martin, not after so long.

Or at least, Jon isn't sure until he manages to dive past the burnt-wax hatred searing his ears two blocks away— _ still, this is not how senses work _ —and smell the blood-dripping crimson he remembers so vividly.

_ (Only it's different now. Darker. Floods his senses and drowns him in both of their hunger, waking the need in his gut. Where Martin used to be blood and tearing tendons he now smells like something more, of too many lives to count torn and laced together and of a shrieking, aching song.) _

_ (Jon's heart, the pieces of it that he's pasted together in the past four years, breaks.) _

He does not run, it would feel too close to a hunt, to letting go and burning up. 

As he walks, he thinks of Georgie, of her hand against his forehead as he crumbled with hunger, of her eyes when she washed blood from his tear-stained cheeks, of her smile when she made him promise to come back soon, and it helps. So Jon walks, and hangs onto the stone in his pocket, and it's nearly an hour before he can finally pinpoint exactly where that crimson exaltation is echoing from.

And when he slips through the half open door and Martin's eyes meet his, he freezes, a single note of song still and silent where he'd been humming it to life. 

He is taller still than Jon remembers, shoulders hunched in further and eyes wearier than they'd been last Jon saw him. Less panicked too, his mind supplies, than they were back in that small room wrapped in layers upon layers of web and dust and hunger. There is blood on his collar and arcing up his shirt, the rust red of it curling in Jon's ears like the fog of half-sleep. There is a new scar along the side of his neck, and Jon can still see beneath it the ten faint marks where his nails had once pressed into Martin's throat.

_ (It feels like both a temptation and a warning, the ravenous, desperate part of him whispering that this man is a monster, a killer, something  _ other _ like the things that smell of crackling bone or groaning dirt above and below.) _

"Martin," Jon whispers when he's close enough to see each individual speck of red against the pale blue of his shirt, "it's been a while, huh?"

There is too much in Martin's face to understand in the next few seconds, expression morphing through shock and pain and relief and so much more in a flash. He doesn't speak, and the silence aches in Jon's chest, cloaking the rush of blood in his ears that had only been rising since he first caught that trace of broken bones and the scent of rising song.

_ (There is so much hope in Jon's lungs that it feels like poison, clogging and deadly.) _

He wishes he could apologize for his fear and only now coming home, but instead it feels like he's choking on both the lie of it and the thick, cloying scent of bloodshed he can feel down to his marrow, ever so sweet.

So he steps forward and takes Martin's shaking hands in his own, ignores the clatter of a knife slipping from slack fingers and hitting the floor, and breathes out, "I've missed you," and it tastes like truth.

* * *

After, once they have gone through the half formed and shocked motions of what each of them think a reunion is, they settle in Martin's childhood home and it's like being young again, fresh out of an alleyway, beaten and bleeding and scared, both so sharp-edged and starving. 

Only Jon is no longer that boy, no longer  _ consumed _ . He is more than something that hungers in the dark now, and he so desperately wants Martin to be too.

_ (They both drink their tea with shaking hands and an ache deep in their chests for different reasons, different choices: past and future.) _

When Jon takes it, Martin's hand is warm and sweaty between his own, and it makes his heart break yet again with missing him.

"I'm not sorry I left," Jon confesses to the dust motes between them, and mid-way through the catch in Martin's breath he manages to finish, "but I'm glad I'm back now."

_ (It is like watching a coffee mug fall, the moment played as if in slow motion. Frame upon frame of motion and thought. The fall, the initial impact, an arch, and on the second crack against the floor it shatters.) _

_ (He collapses into Jon's arms and it feels like something new, something reforged. Still fragile and caked with cobweb, but gleaming nonetheless.) _

"I'm glad that you're here," Martin manages once the tears have slowed, pulling just slightly back from their embrace.

His face is red, tear tracks laced down his cheeks, and Jon wants to wipe them away, rest their forehead back against each other. Instead, he only gives Martin's hands in his a gentle squeeze.

_ (Later, that day or the next, Jon will ask Martin to leave with him, to  _ grow _. Martin will say yes, and Jon will laugh relief and joy and hope into Martin's chest as they hold onto each other.) _

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted on my tumblr [here](https://archivizt.tumblr.com/post/190264494260/a-touch-that-closes-wounds)  
> also please leave a comment or kudos! (and im gonna finally get around to replying to the ones on the fics before this one lol)


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